* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: ** Some suspect that Shizuru was {{not h|imself}}erself during her PsychoLesbian phase, especially considering that immediately after [[spoiler:being resurrected]], she [[TearsOfRemorse breaks down crying]], [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone begging for Natsuki's forgiveness]].** Going even further, there's a theory that ''everyone'' ([=HiME=] and human) is being gradually affected by the [=HiME=] star. Most characters aren't outright going crazy, but emotions are getting raw, tensions are increasing... the star wants a battle royale, so it's pushing everyone into doing things they'd never do normally. If this is true, and the characters ultimately realize it, then the happy, all-is-forgiven ending makes more sense.* AmericansHateTingle: Italian ''Mai-[=HiME=]'' fans hate Shizuru after she [[spoiler:destroyed Yukino's Child, killing Haruka]].* AntiClimaxBoss: [[spoiler:The Obsidian Lord goes down in one attack after the Himes destroy the Hime Star.]]* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: It's by YukiKajiura, what else can you expect?* BaseBreaker: Shizuru. She has many fans, but people who are fans of her victims often hate her. It's hard to find anyone who's indifferent.* BrokenBase: The second half of the show, particularly the outbreak of violence between the [=HiMEs=], some specific characters' actions and personality shifts, and the ending are controversial.* CompleteMonster: ** [[spoiler: The Obsidian Lord. This guy arranges the entire Hime battle to make sure the Hime lose their loved ones so that he gains power from the battle, in during the battle in question in this series he plans destroy and re-create the world due his dislike for how Japan has become.]]** All of the psycho killing and betrayal in the anime is ultimately a result of Nagi's direct and indirect manipulation. He gives the girls their powers and then creates monsters for them to fight in order to train them to use violence to solve their problems. Then he manipulates a few characters to get the massive betrayals and killings we see in later parts. It is not clear exactly why he does this (though he laughs his head off over the betrayals and fawns over the killers) or who he is. Supposedly, he is just serving the Big Bad of the story, but the Big Bad is more of an Orcus on His Throne. At the end, Nagi seems to imply that he himself is an immortal demon and that, though the Big Bad is dead, Nagi can't be killed and will be back.* CrackPairing: In-series (well, in-series-''extra'') example -- the {{Omake}} for episode 21 seems to be {{s|hipTease}}uggesting ''[[TeacherStudentRomance Mai/Midori]]''!* DieForOurShip: Shizuru x Natsuki fans bash Nao. Nao x Natsuki fans bash Shizuru. Mai x anyone else fans (Mai x Mikoto fans ''in particular'') bash Yuuichi. In the manga, fans of Shizuru x Natsuki bash Yuuichi because in that version, Natsuki is attracted to him instead.* DracoInLeatherPants** Nao is quite popular, despite luring in and robbing men via EnjoKosai as a means of getting revenge, and [[spoiler:kidnapping Takumi, indirectly leading to his death, and later attacking Natsuki a few times in revenge for her eye being put out]].** Shizuru's fans tend to overlook her actions, including [[spoiler:killing Yukino's child, leading to Haruka's death, killing Nao's child, leading to her mother's death, and [[KickTheSonOfABitch destroying the First District Headquarters]].]] What exactly happened with Natsuki in the incident Yukino witnessed is less clear, though.** Interestingly enough, some of Shizuru's haters actually forget the First District's real goals when calling her [[spoiler:destruction of its headquarters]] her MoralEventHorizon. It's arguable how much the {{Mook}}s knew about the plans or how necessary killing them was, but trying to pass off the leaders as victims clearly falls into this trope.* EndingAversion / BrokenBase: Opinions vary on the ending. [[spoiler:Is it the happy ending that the characters deserve after everything they went through, or is it a betrayal of the series' tone?]]** Or was the show's attempt to be DarkerAndEdgier a betrayal of ThePowerOfFriendship and TeamSpirit tone set up in the Searrs arc? In that case, it's an Ending ''Re''version.* EnsembleDarkhorse: Of the side characters, Shizuru is the most popular, despite some of her transgressions in the last few episodes of the anime series.* FanPreferredCouple: Shizuru and Natsuki, also known as [[PortmanteauCoupleName ShizNat]], overwhelmingly so. The ''Mai-[=HiME=]'' section of fanfiction.net has more Shizuru×Natsuki fanfics than there are ''all other stories combined.''* FunnyAneurysmMoment: Reito jokes about it being "dangerous" to leave Shizuru to tend to a sick Natsuki by herself in the audio dramas. Shizuru later kisses Natsuki while she's asleep (and might have gone further slightly before that), and also [[{{Gayngst}} angsts]] quite a bit about her feelings being improper, which at least one other person (Haruka) also agrees with. One could see it as a case of Reito being more on the mark than he might have realized, and/or that the joke helps reinforce Shizuru's belief that it's wrong for her to love Natsuki.** In the prototype trailer, Mikoto performs a DynamicEntry on Shiho, kicking her away from Mai as they're engaged in a tussle. [[spoiler:In the actual show, when Shiho attacks Mai with her Child, Mikoto intervenes to save Mai, destroying Shiho's Child and thus killing Yuuichi, the boy Shiho and Mai love, in the process]].* GrowingTheBeard: Arguably the eighth episode.* HetIsEw: Most of the heterosexual pairings besides (or especially) Akira/Takumi (and even then, Akira is [[SweetPollyOliver pretending to be a boy]] for much of the series) get bashed.* HilariousInHindsight: In early episode, some of Mai's yaoi fangirl friends imagine a romance between them because they find both of them cute (not knowing that Akira is a girl), before Mai tells them to keep her brother out of their CrackPairings. And later in the series, Akira and Takumi do seem to be romantically involved.* JerkassWoobie: Nao. She's bitter, hostile toward most people, goes [[DisproportionateRetribution to great lengths]] to avenge her [[spoiler:losing an eye]] and robs perverts for fun because [[spoiler:her father was killed and her mother went into a coma during a robbery]].* LauncherOfAThousandShips: Shizuru is the show's "crown princess of yuri", who probably has been paired with any named female character close to her age, though most fans prefer to ship her with Natsuki.** More so with Mai. By canon relationship (being at the center of a LoveTriangle with Reito and Yuuichi), canon implication (see IncestSubtext above, and LesYay below), or fan re-interpretation, Mai may have literally been paired with [[AnythingThatMoves every other character]] in the series.* LGBTFanbase: Naturally given the number of lesbian characters.* [[HoYay Les Yay]]: Mikoto's behavior toward Mai, naturally giving way to plenty of ShipTease moments between the two. [[spoiler:In reality, Mai feels more comfortable being Mikoto's CoolBigSis, though it's rather blatantly implied that Mikoto wants more than that.]]** Especially notable when Shiho [[TheGlomp glomps]] Mai:---> '''Mikoto:''' (* ''grabs Shiho's hair''* ) Those are ''my'' melons. (* ''tosses her aside, glomps Mai herself, and starts nuzzling Mai's chest''* }** Not only does Shizuru have her very close friendship with and romantic feelings for Natuski, but in one of the sound dramas, "Lingerie Rhapsody," she's ''very'' pleased to check Mai's [[BoobsOfSteel bra size]] (including even putting the bra on her), and notes that she's quite attractive. Natsuki implies that Mai is inwardly enjoying it all.* MarySue: Haruka Suzushiro, who was a somewhat complex BadassNormal in the anime, was turned into probably one of the most powerful Himes in the manga, and it shows (although she and Yukino lose to Natsuki and Mai). There's also some favoritism skewed in her favor over Shizuru; just go read the chapter where she's having a hallucination inside Yukariko's Child.* {{Moe}}: Mikoto, she's extremely cute and her childish behavior makes her even cuter, notable examples include a scene where she grabs onto Mai and clings to her for the better part of a day, and Mai isn't even particularly bothered by it, having apparently gotten used to her acting this way by that point in the series.* {{Narm}}: John Smith's name is quite amusing because it seems to be an obvious pseudonym and sounds strange when the characters try to say it in the Japanese version. It gets even funnier if you're familiar with ''LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya''.* ParanoiaFuel: So many characters are not what they appear to be, in a negative sense, whether their positions in the school are a cover for their true roles, or they're hiding secrets about themselves, including having deadly supernatural powers. Are you sure you ''really'' know them, or just who they're pretending to be?* PeripheryDemographic: Aside from the normal lovers of MagicalGirl series, ''Mai-[=HiME=]'' gained a surprising amount of interest from lesbians, mostly thanks to the draw of the Natsuki x Shizuru pairing. This was embraced by the writers, and expanded upon in the supplemental materials, and then made canon in ''Anime/MaiOtome'', along with various other couples and hinted same-sex crushes.* RealWomenDontWearDresses: Fans have accused Akira of {{Chickification}} for wearing girlier clothes towards the end of the story (in the manga, there's a scene in the ending in which she's trying on a girl's middle school uniform). Not only it ignores that several of the [=HiMe=] are actually rather feminine girls (Shizuru is a LadyOfWar, Natsuki is a Gunslinger who wears her hair very long and loves collecting lingerie, ''Mai'' herself is kinda motherly and a SupremeChef, etc.), but also "forget" that the main reason Akira dressed up as a guy is that she was trying to hide the fact that she was a [=HiMe=] in the first place, thus she started wearing skirts ''only'' when her mission was over and she had no real reason to hide her gender. GirlinessUpgrade, yeah; {{Chickification}}, uhm, no.** Interestingly enough, Akira is still using the highly masculine "ore" to refer to herself.* ReplacementScrappy: Another criticism of Haruka being a Hime in the manga is that she is one instead of Shizuru.* RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap or CreatorsPet: Yuuichi gets a noticeably larger role in the manga than in the anime, to the extent where he's the manga's protagonist, as well as several of his more [[CannotSpitItOut questionable]] [[TheLoad aspects]] from the anime being removed or diluted.* TheScrappy: Two of them, to varying degrees: Yuuichi (NonActionGuy and DieForOurShip effects) and Shiho (ClingyJealousGirl who wants to take Yuuichi away from Mai, and even [[spoiler:kills Takumi]] out of spite).* StoicWoobie: Natsuki has become fairly bitter and lonely after her mother's death and her father abandoning her, but hardly ever shows it.* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: A dark and tragic universe where {{Magical Girl}}s are given their powers as part of some Satanic ritual and are forced to kill each other to protect the ones they love ''could'' have made for an amazing story... if it had actually ''started'' with that plot instead of having it randomly hijack a completely different show after nearly two-thirds of the episodes had been carefully built up as a scientific deconstruction of the MagicalGirl genre. Sunrise themselves apparently agreed with this assessment, considering they made EXA.* TrueArtIsAngsty: Some fans are critical of the ending for [[spoiler:undoing the deaths and character traumas]].* UnpopularPopularCharacter: Haruka is relatively well-liked by the fanbase, while in the anime, most of the characters besides Yukino find her annoying. [[CurbStompBattle When she went up against Shizuru in the election, she lost]], getting twelve votes while Shizuru got over ''eight hundred''.* WhatAnIdiot: Yuuichi. [[spoiler:His attraction to Mai becomes increasingly obvious halfway through the story, and while his desire to help is commendable, he breaks his promises to Shiho twice in doing so, eventually leading her to attack Mai after Nagi manipulates her some more.]]* TheWoobie: ** Akane, especially considering her mental breakdown after [[spoiler:the death of her boyfriend, Kazuya]].** Mai. She blames herself for a childhood tragedy in which her mother died and her brother's heart was weakened. She's forced to fight against her friends in the Carnival, and [[spoiler:loses two of her most important people]]. The toll these tragedies take on her becomes increasingly evident over time.----